


A Clean Fire

by harborshore



Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 11:37:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harborshore/pseuds/harborshore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saint-George grows up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Clean Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [madamedarque](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madamedarque/gifts).



> The title is from “The Day’s March” by Robert Nichols.

Saint-George isn’t very old when he understands that he is not what his father would wish him to be. Or his mother, for that matter. She sniffs and says he is too like his Uncle Peter, whereas his father simply stops talking to him.

Not entirely, of course, that’s an exaggeration (Saint-George _is_ prone to those, so says everyone), but the duke stops telling Saint-George about what he is trying to do with the estate and stops bringing him on hunts and mostly looks at him as if he is confusing simply by virtue of being who he is. Saint-George, being all of ten years old at the time, doesn’t think much of it at first, but it soon becomes very clear that his father isn’t planning to become more engaged with how his son does at school. Or who he is friends with. Or what he thinks is important.

He tries harder, then, but when nothing he does seems to affect anything, he stops. He is fifteen, then. If his mother will nag at him and his father will look away, troubled or bewildered, then he will be what he is and set the world alight as much as he wishes.

There is a different set to his shoulders when he goes back to Eton that autumn.

\--

They say he’s wild. Too wild. He doesn’t mind; it is mostly true. He becomes the darling of his year without even trying much, and when he leaves Eton he is almost sorry. Almost. He was never going to live up to their expectations either.

\--

Oxford isn’t strange. The rituals, the laughing boys and the mucking about, the way he is always Viscount Saint-George to everyone in one way or another (but they appear to be interpreting it differently), it is all very much like the life he has always known.

What is strange is how discontent he feels. He has always been restless, but this fiery itch keeps getting worse and he keeps getting more reckless to see if that will quiet it down. At Denver, he used to take a horse out (and on one memorable occasion, he walked the length of the stable roof and sprained his wrist when he slipped and almost fell off). At Eton, well. There was always something to be done at Eton.

So he wraps his car around a telephone pole. He doesn’t mean to do it, it’s an accident, but he did mean to see how fast his car could swerve and he did mean to put a smile on Robert’s face (he’s been far too serious of late) and a bit of fear into Leonard’s smirk.

The thing about Saint-George that most people don’t understand when they dismiss him as reckless is that it’s not actually that he doesn’t think about what he’s doing. He does. It’s just that the risks are part of the fun. 

No, that’s not quite right. The risks are necessary, because he frequently feels as though he’s about to crawl right out of his skin. He is prone to, as dear old Will put it, play many parts (and he sometimes plays them all at once), but he hasn’t found the one that actually fits yet. Harriet Vane, sitting in his hospital room, looks like she might be able to figure him out if he lets her. He might. The fact that his uncle trusts her has him blurting out the true state of things, and she helps. She rakes him over the coals a bit, but she helps. 

“She’s not half bad,” he tells his uncle when Peter finally returns from wherever the Foreign Office shipped him off to. 

“Gerry,” Peter says, half-warningly.

“I know,” he says. “Civil tongue in my head, etcetera. But really, Uncle. She’s rather--marvelous, isn’t she? ‘All that’s best of dark and bright.’”

“Clear and sure,” his uncle says, agreeing. 

“It’s like that, then,” he says, not asking, because Donne means one thing and one thing only to Peter.

“I’m afraid so,” Peter says. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”

Saint-George shrugs, then winces because the movement pulls on his shoulder. Uncle Peter almost looks proud of the way they just managed to have an adult conversation, and it’s not the only reason why Saint-George kisses Harriet in clear sight of the Senior Common Room, but it’s probably part of it.

He’s happy for Peter, though. Or he will be, once it’s settled. He was fairly sure, from the way she recognised his hands and his voice before anything else, that Harriet had some sort of feelings for Peter, and when he sees them together, he is certain. As long as Peter doesn’t muck it up, but he’s played a long game for years now and Saint-George has faith in his uncle. 

It would have been nice, though, if he could have inherited the ability to fall in love the way he seems to have acquired the Wimsey hands and lots of other family traits. Saint-George has never been in love, is the thing. 

\--

When war breaks out and he enlists, he learns that he does know something about love. That this land, this England can inspire a depth of feeling in him is a surprise and a revelation. He has no illusions about war and what it does (his uncle has never been anything less than honest with him, particularly about the shell-shock), but he finds that he needs, more than he’s ever needed anything in his life, to use his love of flying to keep England safe.

And war is just as awful as he imagined, when Peter told him about it. There has never been anything wrong with his imagination, and he had nightmares for weeks, vivid colours on the back of his eyelids as soon as he closed his eyes. Death is everywhere, and illness too. 

But so is love, in a way. Saint-George doesn’t know how he never saw it before. He loves his men and he loves the country they’re defending and he loves, _loves_ flying to a degree that frightens him because sometimes he doesn’t want to come down.

When he does come down too quickly and too dangerously, landing the burning plane back on base somehow but giving up on getting out because everything hurts too much, Bill Oakley digs him out of the fire despite the fact that he ends up with third-degree burns up to his elbows. That’s love, too, even if it’s a kind Saint-George has some trouble recognizing at first. But when Bill comes to his room in the infirmary and shoves him, hissing with the pain it causes his bandaged arms, Saint-George can see it on his face.

“I promise I’ll let you check every bird I ever take up from now on,” he says, because Bill is one of the mechanics (their best one, really). 

“You’d better,” Bill says, and leans his head on Saint-George’s bed and breathes. 

\--

He goes back to Denver, even though he realises it is no longer really his home, and perhaps it wasn’t ever. Saint-George knows his uncle worries about him selling the estate, and he’s resolved to sign it over to Peter once Denver and his mother are gone, because he finds that his uncle is perhaps the only person that he doesn’t want to disappoint. Bill comes with him. 

Peter and Harriet are up for the weekend and Peter greets Bill with a handshake and calls him the new Bunter. It is technically true that Bill helps him with some of the same kinds of things that Bunter does for Peter (excepting the detective work, of course, because Saint-George doesn’t really have any inclinations that way), but Harriet smiles when he says it. 

“Something like that,” she says, and Saint-George doesn’t colour, but Bill does, a little.

“Right,” Saint-George says. “Shall we show Bill the grounds?” He rattles his cane. “I promise I can still keep up.”

“I never doubted it, Nephew,” Peter says, and there’s something raw in his eyes that Saint-George pretends not to see. 

“I’ll race you to the stables,” he says instead, and takes off.

**Author's Note:**

> goshemily and torakowalski were incredible betas, as ever as always.
> 
>  **Disclaimer** : I’m merely borrowing characters from a genius. No copyright infringement is intended.


End file.
